THE LIVING AND THE DIVINE

Summary and Conclusion

Summary

1. The sequence of processes involved in the origin of living forms and the associated partial aspect of a cosmogonic process of an unfolding inanimate world that we have outlined goes back no further than the assumed existence of living world matter and an assignated consciousness. We have based the concepts 'living' and 'consciousness' and their cosmologic significance on their modifications in empirical experience. The process of modification is determined by the disposition of single, largely cosmic circumstances, aided by analogous indicators of empirical experience

2. Cosmic consciousness, in which there is necessarily represented every impulse of experience in the world, initiates ( for reasons that lie outside of these considerations) in this 'Ur' matter a form structure - comparable to a field, i.e., untold impulses towards movement and direction. These lead to a multitude of differentiations in substance and processes within living matter and continue in the process of form structure. The direction is one of actual living and directly separates off from inanimate matter, which fell away due to the circumstances and conditions to which it was subject. From the former, after manifold intermediate stages and a further similar process of dissociation, there arises the first living structure, in the sense of an organism. From the latter there emerges the matter of the environment. 'Environments' of the first organism continue in ever decreasing circles, from the environment of the entire universe ( with sources of heat and cold in equilibrium) to that of the world body that bears living creatures, to the environment of a specific element and closer locality in which, later, there will appear various 'Ur' organisms. These environments develop in stages of dissociating, whereby a narrower layer of environment always corresponds to a more organism-like, i.e., more living structure . We did not discuss whether one or several 'Ur' organisms came into being together or in which way one form of life develops from another. The assumption is a coexistence of the origin of some basic forms (not necessarily in time, but in the method of its originating), namely directly out of pre-organic matter and that other forms are derivative.

3. We must distinguish clearly between the dynamic form-structure that reduces to 'living' and the 'Ur' organism that is its first product. The form-tension remains active as long as a productive development continues to modify the shapes of types of form. The form-tension, it should be noted, works within the organism that it has brought about and in its descendants, in so far as productive, not epigenetic changes take place in that form. The field is not an individual form of life, but the structure of a species. It is not a question of either pre-formation or epigenesist; both apply. Pre-formation applies to everything that creates the character of a living being, the idea that drives life on, speed, protection, stealing, land, water, air; also quantity fits in here ( one, two or more offspring constitute a capacity for continued life of an average species, such as beasts of prey, rabbits, locusts). There is also a real quantity of reproduction that should be interpreted as epigenetic.
We need to distinguish two types of field: the creatures that connect to a 'stock', the individual members of which are differentiated in a number of ways besides their sexual differences and those where only individuals of the same species are being reproduced.

4. In these particular considerations, we assume that the original form-tension was 'fulfilled' physically and therefore ceases to exist once the end-form of a creature has been attained and reproduction alone takes over.

5. Man is the only being which has attained its end-form although that end-form does not constitute the end of the development, which will probably be by way of a collective. The original form-tension in man is thus still on-going. It is manifest, if the correct line of development is taken, in heightened, ultimately desirable results; if the proper line of development is not taken, the result is every historical convulsion and individual suffering. A recognizable apprehending of the structure of the form-tension of mankind penetrates human consciousness only in a vague and fragmentary way.

6. The human 'order' that corresponds to the form-tension of mankind can, like all human phenomena, be reduced to a reservoir of matter. The modifications that create that reservoir are human activities and these, with the help of consciousness - largely misinterpreted - take place within each human generation. The totality of these activities, in so far as these belong to the trend of development, is the work of the original form-tension of man and constitutes the current state of the field of humanity.

7. The current state of the field constitutes a single stage, yet it holds within itself the whole potential of the wealth of changes in human development.

8. Man's dynamic 'Ur' model should not be seen as a Platonic Idea of man presented as empirical man. Rather, it represents a structure that is not only sustained throughout countless masses of individuals ( we shall indicate how presently); its initial stages point to a pre-gender being, present prior to any development of reproduction and thus prior to any actual individuation in its later sense. As far as the continuation of the continuing activity of the field is concerned in already existing individual beings, since the field is absorbed in the organism's structure as soon as that is produced from the 'Ur' matter, we assume that, like the field-structure, the field's fragments that belong together are distributed among separate single organisms; they drive the creation of form further with each single organism and from these there comes into being a type that modifies and is part of the creative development, i.e., an organism-like being that is formed from independent, sub-individual forms. In contrast to the type of individual in the process of modification and forming there is also a stationary type of individual, of the kind that we find in the insect world, creatures differentiated in more than the two sexes. The type of individual still in an ongoing process of development is restricted to human beings.

In the realm of human beings we find the appearance of sexuality and reproduction constituting a stationary supra-individuality. The continuing, organism-like development is implicit in the history of the human being, a natural history continuation in a narrow sense. Consciousness offers the evidence of a development impulse in happenings, in accordance with the laws that inform living, in the developing supra-individual organization of mankind. Consciousness here is both the organ and the medium for the event of life.

An emotive consciousness senses movements and irritants that deviate from the general form-structure of humanity as individual and societal pain, catastrophies and evil. Cognitive consciousness is where, under a variety of names, the form-structure of humanity may be sought. Justice, for instance, is the form-structure, always in accordance with rules governing life, of a specific supra- individual structure. Persistent damage to that structure leads to its death. In that sense, objective justice rules in history.

9. The form-structure as dynamic reality brings about all kinds of social, economic and technical changes as also changes in the domains of art, philosophy and religion. It is active in certain groups of people whereas, in some areas of human life, changes are barely noticeable or even seemingly non existent. From the perspective of the cosmos, the form-tension that includes mankind is the reality of human unity, a reality that accords with the laws that rule human life. This real unity , the collective that forms a single being which, in an empirical perspective is made up of many, freely moving sub-entities or individuals, must necessarily be different in the context of the cosmos from that which it is in the terrestrial, experiential world. Since, if we assume continuing development in humankind, large parts cannot be left out of that development because they could become permanent obstructions, the end-form in the human order must apply throughout the whole of mankind.

10. The dynamic model of humanity's development does not follow the time pattern of its parts, phases and embodiments; it has its own time pattern. That is because the end-form of the development must necessarily be there within the starting form or, to be more exact, within the form structure tat is prior to the first form that incorporates it. How empirical time proceeds must be anticipated in potential in a special archetypal way in the cosmic form phenomenon, as it indeed is in every living phenomenon. The dynamic model is thus, in a sense, the current reality of the future.

Conclusion

We believe that with this dynamic 'Ur' model of the highest known form of life, our own species, we intellectually reach cosmic reality. We then see some attributes manifested that we cannot find in an empirical experiential way: in an initial sense we have Unity, Living, Consciousness-like, Structure of Direction, Immortality. All of these are predicates that exactly correspond to that which, in different considerations, would be attributed to the godhead. We must stress that in our attempted ascent, we have only reached cognition of empirical awareness of the outermost fringe, one might say the lowest rung of the divine realm, only that which lies closest to empirical awareness. We can in no way make any statements about the divine as such. However, this limitation gives an advantage to pure philosophy that is bound by reality, namely that it can, as it were, reach the divine by following a continuous empirical progression - albeit empirically ascertained via a cosmic construct - and speak of the divine as the borderline case of the empirical. That can only be so if the empirical is not taken as a whole, to be set against the divine as such, as e.g., in the notion of a first cause or a world architect. The empirical has to be probed in such a way that the divine emerges from the empirical schema as evidently both the frontier and an element in the system. The godhead as such creates its own reality.